IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF OHIO

EASTERN DIVISION

Atropin Palmer, :

Plaintiff, : Civil Action 2:11-cv-503

v. : Judge George C. Smith

Sheriff Fred Abdalla, : Magistrate Judge Kemp

Defendant. :

OPINION AND ORDER

Plaintiff Atropin Palmer filed this action under 42 U.S.C.

§1983 against the Sheriff of Jefferson County, Ohio, Fred

Abdalla. The action was filed against Sheriff Abdalla in his

official capacity only, meaning that the case is really an action

against Jefferson County itself. See Kentucky v. Graham, 473

U.S. 159 (1985); Leach v. Shelby County Sheriff, 891 F.2d 1241,

1245-46 (6th Cir. 1989). Mr. Palmer claimed that during a short

stay in the Jefferson County Jail in 2011, he was denied heat and

blankets in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to

the United States Constitution.

After discovery, both parties moved for summary judgment. 

In a Report and Recommendation filed on September 4, 2012, the

Magistrate Judge recommended denying Mr. Palmer’s motion and

entering judgment in favor of the defendant. Mr. Palmer has

filed objections. For the following reasons, the objections will

be OVERRULED and this case will be dismissed.

I.

When objections are received to a report and recommendation

on a dispositive matter, the district judge “must determine de

novo any part of the magistrate judge's disposition which has

been properly objected to.” Fed.R.Civ.P. 72(b)(3). After review,

the District Judge “may accept, reject, or modify the recommended

decision, receive further evidence, or recommit the matter to the

magistrate judge with instructions.” Id.; see also 28 U.S.C. 

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§636(b)(1). Because summary judgment motions are potentially

case-dispositive, the Court’s review in this case is de novo.

II.

 The facts of this case, viewed in the light most favorable

to Mr. Palmer, are set forth in some detail in the Report and

Recommendation. Because the objections do not really take issue

with that statement of facts, the Court adopts it as written, and

will summarize the facts only briefly.

In February of 2011, Mr. Palmer spent four days in the

Jefferson County jail. He had been transferred there from the

Ross Correctional Institution so that he could appear in court in 

Jefferson County. For two or three of those days, he was in a

cell with no heat and with only one blanket. Taking the facts to

be as he states them, one guard told him, on the third day he was

at the jail, that it was the jail’s policy to issue only one

blanket per inmate. 

Mr. Palmer was moved to a segregation cell on the third day

after finding out that his cellmate had been using two

mattresses, one of which was supposed to have been in the cell

for Mr. Palmer’s use, and after the two had a confrontation. He

received two blankets and a mattress while in segregation. On

the fourth day, he went back to Ross Correctional Institution. It

was typical February weather while Mr. Palmer was at the jail,

with outside temperatures sometimes dropping below twenty

degrees. Mr. Palmer claims he was very cold for much of his stay

at the Jail. His hands and feet were numb much of the time while

he was there, and he caught a cold as well. The questions raised

by the summary judgment motions are whether he was subjected to

cruel and unusual punishment and, if so, did that occur due to

some official custom or policy of Jefferson County, as

implemented by Sheriff Abdalla

III.

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The summary judgment standard is also set forth in detail in

the Report and Recommendation and, again, the objections do not

argue that the law relating to summary judgment was stated

incorrectly. The Court adopts that portion of the Report and

Recommendation in full, mindful that the facts are to be

construed in favor of the non-moving party and all reasonable

inferences are to be drawn in that party’s favor. See Adickes v.

S.H. Kress & Co., 398 U.S. 144 (1970).

IV.

The Report and Recommendation concluded that Mr. Palmer’s

claims failed both because reasonable persons could not infer,

based on the facts of record, that any deprivation of heat or

blankets resulted from an official policy or custom of Jefferson

County - and that is the correct standard for imposing liability

on a municipal entity such as a county, see Monell v. Dep’t of

Soc. Servs., 436 U.S. 658 (1978) - and because reasonable persons

could not conclude that any Eighth or Fourteenth Amendment

violations occurred. Either finding is sufficient to support the

entry of summary judgment in the defendant’s favor.

Mr. Palmer’s objections are not terribly specific. As far

as the jail custom or policy is concerned, he states that it had

become a practice for inmates to take the mattress and blanket

provided for a cellmate if no other inmate was in the cell,

forcing the new cellmate to fight for those items. However, he

concedes that he had a plastic sleeping mat and one blanket at

all times, and there is no evidence that jail officials were

aware of and condoned his cellmate’s confiscation of the other

mattress. 

On the issue of an Eighth Amendment violation, he devotes

several paragraphs of argument to the proposition that 42 U.S.C.

§1997e(e), which prohibits the recovery of compensatory damages

for emotional injury without an accompanying physical injury, is

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unconstitutional. The authority he cites, Siggers-El v. Barlow,

412 F.3d 693 (6th Cir. 2005), does not actually address that

issue at all, but a subsequent district court decision in that

case held the statute unconstitutional as applied to First

Amendment violations, see Siggers-El v. Barlow, 433 F.Supp. 2d

811 (E.D. Mich. 2006). Of course, Mr. Palmer has not claimed any

First Amendment violation here. 

Mr. Palmer does not directly address the Magistrate Judge’s

conclusion that, as a matter of law, being confined in a cell for

a short period of time during cold weather is not, without more,

cruel and unusual punishment. As the Report and Recommendation

notes, citing to Hudson v. McMillian, 503 U.S. 1, 9 (1992),

“extreme deprivations are required to make out a conditions-ofconfinement claim.” And this case is difficult, if not

impossible, to distinguish from this Court’s earlier decision in

Wells v. Jefferson County Sheriff Dept., 159 F.Supp. 2d 1002,

1011 (S.D. Ohio 2001) aff'd, 35 Fed. App'x 142 (6th Cir. 2002),

where the Court held that being forced to sleep on the floor on a

mattress for a week in a cell that was both cold and regularly

sprayed with insecticides was not an Eighth Amendment violation.

Finally, even if Mr. Palmer was exposed to unconstitutional

conditions of confinement, under existing case law, he had to

produce some evidence that the County, acting through its

decision-makers, was deliberately indifferent to the type of

suffering which its claimed “one-blanket” policy caused. See,

e.g., Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825 (1994). The Report and

Recommendation concluded that 

Mr. Palmer has failed to provide evidence that the

prison officials’ state of mind was one of “deliberate

indifference” to his health or safety. The only

evidence he offers on that subject is the fact that one

prison employee refused his request for a second

blanket. There was no extended discussion with that

employee, nor did Mr. Palmer discuss the conditions

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with any other employees of the jail prior to his move

to segregation at the end of the third day. When he

moved to segregation, he requested a second blanket and

was provided with one. This evidence taken together

fails to demonstrate deliberate indifference. 

Report and Recommendation, Doc. 38, at 9. The Court agrees that

the record contains no evidence from which a reasonable trier of

fact could infer the presence of the required level of deliberate

indifference. In the context of municipal liability based on an

allegedly unconstitutional custom, practice, or policy, a

plaintiff must show not only that his rights were violated by an

employee of that municipality, but that “through its deliberate

conduct, the municipality was the ‘moving force’ behind the

injury alleged. That is, a plaintiff must show that the municipal

action was taken with the requisite degree of culpability and

must demonstrate a direct causal link between the municipal

action and the deprivation of federal rights.” Board of County

Comm’rs of Bryan County, Oklahoma v. Brown, 520 U.S. 397, 404

(1997). In municipal liability cases, as “[i]n any §1983 suit,

... the plaintiff must establish the state of mind required to

prove the underlying violation.” Id. No reasonable trier of

fact could conclude from this record that, even if Jefferson

County had a “one-blanket-per-inmate” policy, such a policy was

adopted with reckless indifference to the health or well-being of

jail inmates. Thus, Mr. Palmer’s claim fails for this additional

reason.

 V.

For all of these reasons, the plaintiff’s objections (Doc.

40) to the Report and Recommendation (Doc. 38) are OVERRULED and

the Report and Recommendation is ADOPTED AND AFFIRMED. 

Defendant’s motion for summary judgment (Doc. 33) is GRANTED. 

All other pending motions are DENIED. This case is DISMISSED

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WITH PREJUDICE and the Clerk is directed to enter judgment in

favor of the defendant.

IT IS SO ORDERED.

/S/ George C. Smith

George C. Smith

 United States District Judge

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